Harriet and the Piper eBook

There was a new note in the passionate, tender voice.
Linda was all alive for the few seconds he needed
her, then she sank into her voiceless apathy again,
and the short winter afternoon wore away, and there
was no change. The doctor came, the nurse returned,
Fred appeared at the door. After awhile it was
dark, and a shaded lamp was lighted, and Harriet went
downstairs, to the world of subdued voices, and smothered
sobs, and fearful glances. And always horror
brooded over the little house, and over the simple,
normal family living that had been so taken for granted
a few days before.

Harriet talked to the little girls, and while they
were going to bed amused Nammy, whose lighter attack
of the disease, a week ago, had begun the siege.
Fred, tenderly attempting to reassure his daughters,
buttoned his small son into woollen sleeping-wear,
brought the inevitable drink, heard the garbled prayers,
glancing now and then toward the door, as if fearing
a summons, and looking, Harriet thought, stooped and
gray and suddenly old.

She took Linda’s place for an hour, but before
it was up the mother came back, and they kept their
vigil together. Fred answered the strange, untimely
ringing of the door-bell, brought in packages, conferred
in the halls with the doctors. Midnight came,
two o’clock, four o’clock.

Suddenly there was panic. Harriet, by chance
in the hall, saw Linda and Fred and the doctors together,
heard Linda’s quick, anguished “Yes!”
and Fred’s hoarse “Anything!” Her
heart pounded; the nurse ran upstairs. Harriet
fell upon her knees with a sobbing whisper, “No—­no—­no!”
and Linda clung to her husband with a cry torn, from
the deeps of her heart, “Oh, Pip—­my
own boy!”

They were all needed; they were back in the sick room,
there was hurry, quick whispers, breathless replies.
No time to think now, though Harriet cast more than
one agonized glance at Linda’s drawn face, and
nodded more than once to Fred that she should not be
here. The child protested with a choked cry; and
Linda’s voice, that new, deep, terrible voice,
answered him, “Never mind, my dearest—­just
a minute, that’s all! Mother is taking care
of you!” And Harriet heard her sister say, in
a breath almost inaudible: “Thy will be
done—­Thy will be done!”

Dawn came slowly and reluctantly at seven; the village
lay bleak and closed under a sky of unbroken gray.
Here and there smoke streamed upward from a chimney,
or a window-pane showed an oblong of pale light.
The dirty snow, frozen in thick lumps about the yard,
was trodden by a furtive black cat, that mounted a
fence and meowed desolately.

Harriet saw this from Linda’s kitchen, when
she put out the light that was becoming unnecessary.
But her heart was singing for joy, and the house was
brimful of an inner light and cheer that no winter
bleakness could touch. The girl had been crying
until she was almost blind, but it was a crying mixed
with laughter and prayers of utter thankfulness.
She and Fred had built up a roaring fire, had given
the nurse a royal breakfast, had had their own coffee,
and now Harriet was waiting for Linda, in that mood
when the commonplaces of life take on an exquisite
flavour, and just to be free to eat and sleep and
live is luxury.